Discovery of head-crest on duck-billed dinosaur like learning 'that elephants had trunks'

A rare, mummified duck-billed dinosaur, found in deposits west of Grande Prairie in west-central Alberta, has revealed for the first time that dinosaurs’ heads were adorned with a fleshy comb similar to a roosters’ red crest.

Scientists say duck-billed dinosaurs, Edmontosaurus regalis, were the most common dinosaurs in North America between 75 and 65 million years ago.

The “gentle giants” grew to about 12 metres long, and filled the same ecological role that kangaroos or deer play today. But no one had suspected that they — or other dinosaurs, for that matter — had fleshy structures on the tops of their heads.

“Until now, there has been no evidence for bizarre soft-tissue display structures among dinosaurs; these findings dramatically alter our perception of the appearance and behaviour of this well-known dinosaur and allow us to comment on the evolution of head crests in this group,” Phil Bell from Australia’s University of New England said in a release Thursday. “It also raises the thought-provoking possibility of similar crests among other dinosaurs.”

“An elephant’s trunk or a rooster’s comb might never fossilize because there is no bone in them,” Bell said in the release as reported by the Edmonton Journal. “This discovery is equivalent to learning for the first time that elephants had trunks. We have lots of skulls of Edmontosaurus, but until now there have been no clues to suggest they might have had a big fleshy crest.”